Archive for March, 2005

Terri Shiavo is dying. Slowly dying. By the time your read this, she may be gone.

I’m having a hard time with this one, as many are. I don’t generally pray for people in the news, but I’ve prayed for her. And I’ve prayed for the family. This event has touched me deeply.

I know all about abortion. I’ve heard a woman say without batting an eye that she aborted her baby in May, conceived again in August because she didn’t want to pregnant through the summer. I was horrified and chilled.

I’ve been through the holocaust museum in Washington, DC and seen the bins filled with shoes, filled with eye glasses of those who met their death at the hands of that madman, Adolf Hitler. It was sad and moving and terrible and horrible all at once.

I’ve had a woman berate, scold and physically kick me when I suggested that her 70 year old mother undergo surgery for an ovarian tumor which was likely cancer. The poor soul was quite ill already but alert and able to think for herself. The daughter, however, was a domineering personality, and brow-beat her mother into no treatment, scaring her with stories of a painful death. She inadvertently gave a glimpse into her own heart, however, when she told me out of ear shot of her mom, that she wasn’t going to allow surgery and expensive care for her mother as her mothers savings would be depleted by the treatment and she, the daughter, would lose her inheritance. The poor woman died a painful death one month later and never received treatment.

I’ve read stories of babies being born alive in abortion clinics and then left to die with no treatment. The barbarians of the abortions chambers would have no trouble making that moral leap.

But, somehow, this is different. This pulls at me in a different way.

She’s not in pain. She is not “suffering” in the terminal illness sense of the word, or the chronic cancer pain sense of the word.

She has had doctors certify this “Persistent vegetative state” which the Christian Medical Society calls a pejorative term. Persons, regardless of their disability, should not be compared to plants. The word “vegetative” is only there to help justify ending the persons life, because no one wants to live like a “vegetable.” Even then, 30 some odd docs have disputed this finding just by watching videos of her. Is there doubt about her disability? YES.

Her husband stands to gain financially from her death.

Her husband may have already tried to cause her death by overdosing her with insulin, according to a nurse who was providing care to Terri at that time.

Her husband took money from a malpractice settlement earmarked for her rehabilitation and then did not spend it on her rehab.

And he is the one calling the shots on her care. This makes no sense.

The Jews were gassed by a madman. There is no madman here.

The babies are aborted by abortionists and woman who buy into the concept and the idea. Terri isn’t buying in to this idea. She didn’t pull her own feeding tube.

A family member who brow-beat her mother into refusing care was despicable, but her mother could have stood up for herself and asked for treatment and didn’t.

But this woman has family willing to take over her care. She has a disability, but is not (was not)suffering. Surely, one cannot place the Florida courts, the appeals courts and supreme court into the same category as Hitler.

But yet, all who would want her to live and be provided care have been thwarted, turned away, left with nothing but helplessness, hopelessness, grief and despair.

All appeals appear to be exhausted. Oh, man… This makes no sense.

Peggy Noonan, as usual, has a wonderful piece on OpinionJournal.com regarding this senseless tragedy. Where does the liberal left get its zeal for this act? How does one so callously disregard a mother and a father’s plea to save their daughter? These things are beyond my grasp.